The recent commodity boom was the longest and broadest of the post-World War II period. Although most prices have declined sharply since their mid-2008 peak, they are still considerably higher than 2003, the beginning of the boom. Apart from strong and sustained economic growth, the recent boom...

With heterogeneous productivity and sticky prices in the short run, exchange rate changes can generate real effects on agents in the economy; the result is that the currency regime becomes a policy variable amenable to political competition. This paper discusses how special interests and...

The recent empirical growth literature has proposed three underlying fundamental determinants of economic growth, namely, physical geography, economic integration, and institutional quality. This paper unpacks the final determinant into both political-economic institutions as well as the...

The theoretical discussion on globalization has suggested that there are linkages between democracy and trade, although the direction of influence is less certain. Formal empirical studies remain scarce, and have often focused on the question of whether democratic regimes influence trade policy,...

The scope and complexity of international trading arrangements in the Middle East, as well as their spotty historical record of success, underscores the urgent need for an adequate understanding of the relative costs and benefits of participation in preferential trading arrangements and, more...

The free flow of global capital has resulted in destabilizing financial crises, coupled with significant redistributive effects. However, the existing literature has not adequately addressed the channels for this redistribution, nor the different factors that influence the formation of...

This paper considers the interactions between governance, educational outcomes, and economic performance. More specifically, we seek to establish the linkages by which institutional quality affect growth by considering its mediating impact on education. While the contribution of both human...